Fixing Problems

'Stubborn' Isn't a Personality. It's a Failed Diagnosis.

Nine words and phrases that quietly end the investigation into why your dog isn't listening. Each one names a cause inside the dog. The real cause is almost always outside it.

By Dr. Mara Chen, Senior Veterinary Editor

July 19, 2026 · 8 min read

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Every label in this article does the same thing, and it’s worth naming up front, because once you see it you can’t unsee it.

Each one is a diagnosis. Not a description, a diagnosis. It claims to explain why your dog isn’t doing the thing, and every one of them locates the cause inside the dog: in their character, their attitude, their willingness. Stubborn. Disobedient. Untrainable. Spiteful.

And the moment you accept that diagnosis, you stop investigating. Why would you keep looking for a cause? You already have one. The dog is like that.

The problem is that the diagnosis is nearly always wrong, and the real cause is almost always sitting outside the dog, in the environment, in the training history, in the level of distraction, or in the dog’s body. A 2020 review of behavior-referral caseloads found that a conservative estimate of around a third of dogs referred for behavior problems had some form of painful condition, and in some caseloads the figure approached 80 percent. Think about what that means. A meaningful share of the dogs being called stubborn are dogs who hurt.

“By the time a dog reaches me with a behavior label attached, that label has usually cost them six months,” says Dr. Lena Park. “The word arrives, the owner stops asking why, and nobody checks the hips. I would rather hear ‘I have no idea what’s going on with him.’ That sentence, at least, is still curious.”

Training is teaching a dog what you want, when you ask for it. That’s it. If they’re not doing it, they don’t yet know what you want, or they can’t do it right now. Neither of those is a character flaw. Here are the nine words that get in the way of finding out which it is.

Level one: the labels that just stall the investigation

These are the mildest, and they still cost you months, because each one ends the sentence where a question should have started.

”They’re being difficult”

Not an observation. A mood. It surfaces when a training session has turned into a struggle instead of a good time together.

“Difficult” means exactly one thing: a mismatch between what you want and what the dog is doing. And underneath that mismatch is always a real reason. The dog is tired, confused, frightened, overstimulated, hurting, distracted, uncertain, or being paid better by something else in the room.

Better questions: What is in the way, right this second? What would make this easy enough for him to get it right?

”Stubborn”

The most common label by a mile. It comes out when a dog doesn’t respond to a cue, ignores you, or plants their feet and refuses to walk the way you’re walking.

What the label claims: the dog could do it and is choosing not to.

What’s usually true: the dog hasn’t practiced enough, hasn’t practiced it here, or is trying to tell you something you haven’t decoded. A dog who plants on a walk is frequently a dog who is frightened of something up ahead, or a dog whose joints hurt. Neither of those reads as pain to a person in a hurry.

Say instead: “We need more practice.” “He’s still learning.” “She’s telling me something."

"They know better”

The most seductive one, because it feels vindicated by evidence. You have seen them do it.

But a behavior your dog can perform is not the same as a behavior your dog can perform anywhere, and the gap between those two things is months of deliberate work. Your dog may nail a down in the living room and be genuinely incapable of it in the doorway of a dog park, where the world is on fire and there are eleven other dogs. That is not defiance. That is a skill that has never been generalized, and generalizing it is a job you haven’t done yet.

Say: “She can do this at home. We haven’t taught it out here."

"Untrainable”

Every trainer hears this constantly, and it is never true. What is true is that someone hasn’t succeeded yet, and the reasons are almost always findable: the handler doesn’t have the skills yet, the dog can’t function at that level of distraction, the dog is too anxious to take food (a dog who won’t eat a treat is telling you they are over threshold, full stop), the dog needs far more repetitions than average, or the dog learns through play rather than food.

The word functions as a verdict, and verdicts end the search for a second idea. Say “he’s learning slowly” or “she’s a work in progress” instead. Both are true, and neither of them stops you from trying something else tomorrow.

Level two: the labels that make it your dog’s fault

Now we’re into the vocabulary of dominance theory, which was built on flawed science and has been quietly poisoning the well for fifty years.

”Disobedient”

A fossil, left over from an era when people called themselves their dog’s master. It smuggles in an entire worldview: that the dog exists to obey, and that not obeying is rebellion against a power structure.

Your dog is not staging a coup. Your dog is either unsure what you want, or something in the environment is more compelling than you are right now. Both are training problems, and both are fixable.

”They don’t respect me”

Same playbook. Dogs are not withholding respect from you, and respect is not a currency you can demand at the door.

Good behavior comes out of a good relationship: a history of good experiences, clear communication, trust, and training that both of you enjoy. Worry instead about whether your dog actually likes spending time with you. That question is answerable, and improving the answer improves everything downstream of it.

”Pack leader”

The load-bearing pillar of the whole rotten structure. L. David Mech, whose wolf research launched the alpha-wolf idea into popular culture, has spent decades publicly trying to take it back: wild wolf packs are families, not rank hierarchies fought over by strangers. Your dog is not a wolf, and is not plotting to run your household.

The alternatives are better roles anyway. Be your dog’s teacher, teammate, protector, best friend, and family. Those are all things you can actually be good at.

Level three: the labels that get a dog punished for being afraid

These two do the real damage, and they are the two most owners are most confident about.

”He looks guilty, so he knows he did wrong”

This one has a study attached, and the study is brutal.

Alexandra Horowitz videotaped dogs across trials where they had the opportunity to eat a forbidden treat while the owner was out of the room, then varied what the owner believed had happened. The guilty look showed no relationship whatsoever to whether the dog had actually eaten the treat. It tracked one thing only: whether the owner scolded them. And the effect was strongest in the dogs who had been perfectly obedient and were being told off anyway.

Read that again. The guiltiest-looking dogs were the innocent ones getting yelled at.

The guilty look is not a confession. It is an appeasement display, aimed at your face and your voice, produced by a dog who can see you are angry and is trying to make it stop. Punish it and you teach your dog that your arrival home is dangerous, which is precisely why so many “guilty” dogs get worse instead of better.

”He did it out of spite”

The natural endpoint of the guilty-look error, and the most damaging item on this list, because it converts a frightened dog into an adversary.

Dogs do not draft plans to punish you for leaving the house. The destruction that happens between the door closing and the door opening is, overwhelmingly, separation distress. It is a welfare problem, not a grudge. A dog treated as spiteful gets punished for panicking, and there is no version of that story that ends well for anybody.

What to do with all this

The point of retiring these words is not politeness. It’s diagnostic hygiene.

Every one of them is a full stop. The moment you say “stubborn,” the investigation is over, and the actual answer, that your dog’s elbow hurts, that this parking lot is too loud, that nobody ever taught this behavior anywhere but the kitchen, never gets found.

Swap the label for a question and the question does real work:

Instead of he’s stubborn → what’s making this hard right now?
Instead of she knows better → where has she actually practiced this?
Instead of he’s being spiteful → what happens to him when I leave?
And always, especially for a behavior that’s new or getting worse: has a vet ruled out pain?

None of us unlearn old habits overnight, and you’re going to catch yourself saying “stubborn” again. That’s fine. What matters is what you do in the two seconds after.

Our dogs are not making our lives harder on purpose. Like anyone, they’re doing the best they can with what they’ve got, and when we talk about them with curiosity instead of blame, training stops being a power struggle and starts being a thing we do together.